Many corporate information technology (IT) departments use resource management products to ease the cost and burden of managing large numbers of computing devices. Within these resource management products, managed devices are usually assigned a unique identity.
Some work may be performed by the managed devices in conjunction with a network service. In some instances, the device may be told the location of the required service. In other instances, the device must discover the network service.
Some network resources may only be discovered through a response to a broadcast request. When only one resource management product exists on the network, and it has only a single management domain, the managed device is free to discover and use any instance of the required network service.
Problems often arise when there are multiple management domains within a network. For example, the managed device can not be guaranteed that the instance of the network service responding to its broadcast request is the correct instance of the service. If the managed device chooses the incorrect instance of the network service, the results may be unpredictable. The odds of selecting the correct instance of the network service diminish as the number of management domains rise.
Other problems and drawbacks exist in current resource management environments.